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After a gap of one year, advertisers once again have realised the power of Indian Premier League (IPL) as a marketing platform. While the official broadcaster, Multi Screen Media (MSM), claims of its best run so far, on ground sponsorship has also seen lot of activity.
GroupM ESP, the content sports and entertainment arm of media agency GroupM Media India, has said that it has been an active intermediary and enabler, for clients and their brands and team owners and their franchises seeking to leverage the IPL on-ground sponsorship platform, by providing end-to-end IPL related solutions.
Incidentally, it has enabled on-ground sponsorship deals worth $15 million between various IPL teams and sponsors for IPL season 6, it said. After the end of fifth season last year, all the central sponsorship deals were up for renewal. While the title sponsor DLF had decided not to renew its partnership, there were doubts over the IPL format. However, a tender floated by IPL for the title sponsorship, which saw PepsiCo bagging the title sponsorship for next 5 years, for double the amount what DLF had paid.
It paved the way for a few advertisers to return to the IPL.
On GroupM ESP’s involvement, Vinit Karnik, head of Sports and Live practice said, "We've been part of IPL since its inception and we strongly believe that IPL is India's biggest and the most powerful marketing platform for brands to leverage the combined appeal of cricket and entertainment."
"The total value of all the on-ground deals enabled and activated by GroupM ESP in IPL 6 is estimated at $15 million," he said.
Additionally, the agency worked closely with Sun TV Network's IPL team Sunrisers Hyderabad and enabled it to get off to strong start with 10 on-ground official partners/sponsors including Make My Trip, 7UP, Garnier, Kingfisher, Livein Jeans, Manyavar, Sheltrex, and RN Sports.
Other high profile deals managed by GroupM ESP include Bajaj Allianz and Mumbai Indians, and Flying Machine and Royal Challengers Bangalore.
It said that it also advised Vodafone on renewing its on-ground sponsorship deal with IPL for another five years backed by a comprehensive valuation exercise based on proprietary data and insights.
While the on-air sponsorship has been a hit amongst many advertisers, which gives a brand an instant brand recall, now the advertisers are also looking at on-ground sponsorship opportunities at the central level, and at the franchise level including team sponsorship, licensing & merchandising. STAR Plus, the Hindi general entertainment channel has also signed three-year deal with the IPL for on-ground sponsorship.
Shailesh Kapoor, co-founder and CEO of media insights firm Ormax Media said, "IPL allows for extensive ground sponsorship, which is the equivalent of non-intrusive product placements.”
As per the company’s IPL research (Ormax Trac20) Vodafone and Pepsi have clocked unaided recall scores in excess of 50%, “which can never be achieved through conventional advertising on general entertainment channels,” Kapoor explained.
